


shadow man

by hingabee



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Animal Death, Gen, Guest Starring: Child Soldiers, terrible kids, very vague gore and violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-17 00:55:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13648035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hingabee/pseuds/hingabee
Summary: but the shadow man is really youlook in his eyes and see your reflectionlook to the stars and see his eyeshe'll show you tomorrow, he'll show you the sorrowsof what you did today





	shadow man

**Author's Note:**

> tiny ficlet for the mgs wintergames challenge F5 (bowie song title challenge bc someone had to do this painful cheese)

Eli watches his naked feet; toes digging around in the dirt listlessly; as he listens to his men work in the merciless sun. The chirping of crickets and the buzzing of the underbrush easily drowns their exhausted complaints out.

He has been in a bad mood ever since the first two of them, a pair of brothers, deserted this little island; _his_ kingdom of the flies. 

At first the rotting heads of the wild pigs they had hunted for food; spiked on top of sharpened branches and stuck into the loose ground around their camp; had been a warning for outsiders not to approach their little paradise.

By now they had started to intimidate his own soldiers too. 

  
When the next one tries to get away, all quiet and secretly in the darkness of the night, the guard _insists_ he has not seen or heard a thing.

Eli has him punished anyway.

In the end he catches the deserter; exhausted and dehydrated, no food or water with him; at the rocky, salt crusted shore of the lake. 

He beats him wordlessly, then sends him out over the waters on that little useless raft the traitor has build from sticks and their precious supplies, knowing fully well that he will never reach the other side.

When he walks back to their camp to look in the frightened eyes of his men; their dirty little faces twisted into sad grimaces as they mourn the loss of another comrade; Eli can feel a burning stare drilling into the back of his sweaty neck. 

He turns and glares up into the trees and for a split second he spots a distorted wave of black between the lush, green leafage.

_You can not hide forever._ He thinks and reaches out to the shadow his mind is casting nowadays. _They already know you are here._

When there is no answer he adds something with a sly, little smile dancing around his lips. 

_And they are scared of you, too._

  
They have built their camp around the giant machine that carried them here, and Eli teaches his men how to repair the tarps that are supposed to protect them from the sun. 

In the evenings he watches them sit by the fire and laugh at stories and little games from the machine's cockpit with narrowed eyes and fidgeting hands. 

He suffers his solitude with pride though, because these moments; when everyone is busy with their petty little lives of no real importance; are the only ones where his shadow appears beside him, huddled close with hurried whispers that only he is able to listen to. 

  
Three more of his men _leave_ over the next few days and when Eli finds the mangled corpse of one between the scrubs near the latrine; wounds inflicted on the skinny, little body that match no animal's claws or teeth; he knows exactly who went to deliver punishment in his name. 

Ah, yes. His name.

The soldiers just go with his nom de guerre, as they _should_ , most of them do not even know the name that has been forced upon him at birth, but his shadow, hidden so well at the back of his mind, _knows_. 

And every time he mumbles it to Eli; pronunciation still heavy and careful on his untrained tongue; they fall closer to each other in the stuffy cockpit as they watch the last of his men leave one by one. 

  
In the end they are alone and Eli even turns down the offered execution of the traitors; there is no need for them anymore. 

"No, I have you now." He simply says to the empty space beside him. 

And his shadow hums in approval.


End file.
